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iPhone 3.0 Software Announced
Apple unveiled the iPhone 3.0 software just now in Cupertino. Here's MacWorld's live-action blow-by-blow coverage. The announcement included new features for developers and users. For developers, the big items were in-app purchasing (for example for game upgrades, map content, and subscriptions) for paid apps only; peer-to-peer connectivity via Bluetooth; giving apps access to hardware via the dock connector or Bluetooth; maps embeddable in apps; and push notifications. For users, there's finally cut-copy-paste available in all apps; search across everything in the iPhone; landscape keyboard; MMS messaging; and voice memos. Developer beta starts today and 3.0 will be available in the summer — free for all 3G phones, $10 for iPod Touch.
I'm wondering if this means we get that bluetooth keyboard with core apps or do we need to use 3rd party apps?
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Well that covers a list of features I really wanted as a would be dev and a iphone owner. All I can say is "fucking finally!"
If being forced to carry a Zune and a Windows Mobile phone wasn't enough of an insult, poor Mrs. Gates is going to be extra jealous now.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
10:08 PT - DM: Scott looking very hip in a black zip-up. I wonder who does his hair. 3.0 is a major update to the iPhone OS. Comes with "incredible features" for developers and customers. Here's what's on tap for developers.
He's so dreamy! I hope the new iPhone OS has lots of his pictures pre-loaded!
And the new iPhone works with any service provider, right?
WHy does apple do this kind of crap? Is the touch less expensive or subsidized or ANYTHING that would justify having to pay vs their Iphone counterparts?
Good-bye
You've now achieved what Palm devices could do ten years ago.
I'll use copy-paste once or twice a week, but I'd use Adobe Flash 99% of ever hour spent using Safari.
I wish I had a reference for you, but it has to do with SOX compliance. The 3.0 software is free to iPhone users because it's part of the AT&T contract. For iPod Touch, there's no such contract. Because of some legal accounting obligation under SOX, and because there is no contract for iPod Touch users, Apple has to charge for software upgrades for the iPod touch. This was mentioned by Jobs I believe at tone of Apple's media blitzes last year.
Sorry.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Filtering is best done server side. For me the to-do list is:
Flash
Java
Printing
Record video from the camera
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I, for one, am not looking forward to being spammed in my apps to pay "Only $.99 for this new widget! Click Now!". I expect everything from EA to be even worse on this platform than it has been to date.
Did you see that FPS demo where the guy had to pay extra to get the rocket launcher? That does **not** make me want to play that game.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
*EVERY* time Apple announce something new for the touch/iphone, it costs an extra $10 on the touch.
*EVERY* time someone moans about that.
*EVERY* time someone else points out that Apple account for iphone sales over a period of time, thus allowing them to maneuver around the ridiculous Sarbonnes-Oxley requirements. They bill the touch as a one-off, so can't add new functionality without there being a representative charge.
Whether you agree with them or not, that's their position (presumably that of their highly-paid lawyers, too). Get over it, *every* time you add onto the touch, you're going to pay extra.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Exchange syncing more than one folder ..
Exchange displaying e-mails with the correct attributes
Exchange handling appointments in a sensible way
Those would be low on the priority list. The iPhone's primary target market is consumers, not corporate users. Features like those are more aimed at corporate users, not home users.
My blog
The new SDK will allow developers to control accessories attached to the dock adapter. I'm really hopeful someone will make a card reader...it would so nice to bring a 32GB iPod touch on trips instead of a MacBook Pro.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
No video recording. Less space than a iPod Classic. Lame.
You just need better playlists. I've got well over 150 GB of mp3s and a 16GB ipod touch (with almost 2 GB of that taken up by photos/apps/movies), and I've got it cycling my music just fine.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
So you really want a Blackberry Storm with an Apple logo on it?
It's actually a matter of generally accepted accounting principles, and I still have trouble seeing what Sarbanes has to do with it. It's revenue recognition, which is pure GAAP. The argument is basically that they'd have understated the expenses associated with generating the revenue last period, i.e. overstated net income and it's derivative numbers such as earnings per share, if they added new functionality to sales already recognized.
* tell me how many characters my damn SMS is at
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
That 32GB iPod Touch just isn't cutting it at all and I loathe that classic iPod. Hurry up with the 64GB upgrade already.
Yeah, because you really need more than 10,000 songs on you. God forbid you have to listen to the same song twice in 2 months.
I have a metric crap ton of music too. But realistically. Even the 8GB model is more enough for music, especially if you can re-sync it once a week or so.
And while I wouldn't mind a capacity bump in the next release, its hardly the most important feature. I'd value battery life, better speaker, gps, and dozen other features more than more memory.
This only came up in the Q&A afterwards, but tethering is a new feature supported by OS 3.0, but Apple are not making a big thing of it yet because it's going to need to be negotiated with the phone carriers before it can be rolled out.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I think the answer might be neither. In a Q&A at the end of the demo, someone asked a cryptic question with an equally cryptic answer:
From the Gizmodo live blog:
Q: Bluetooth human input device profile for external keyboards.
A: We have nothing to announce.
Considering how they went to great pains to announce individual features of bluetooth that they were using, and avoided talking about bluetooth filesharing, I think they are hinting that bluetooth keyboards are not in the cards at the moment.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
* Removable Battery
* Video
* Speech to Text
* Waterproof
* Fireproof
* Shatterproof
* Self-cleaning screen
* Wriststraps
* Juice dispenser
* Cash dispenser
* Stock predictor
* Mechanical actuators of any kind
* Biometric monitoring
* Jury tampering
* AI
* Introspection
* ESP
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
So you really want a Blackberry Storm with an Apple logo on it?
How about a blackberry storm with a proper touch interface? That's what I want.
(And no I actually don't mind the click screen at all; i actually quite like it even.)
I just can't stand the fact that there is no velocity/momentum support. Want to scroll the screen? On either device just move finger. Works great. Want to scroll up faster?
On an iphone move finger faster - screen scrolls faster. Flick it and the screen scrolls really fast and gradually slows down.
On a storm. move finger faster, screen scrolls at the same speed. Flick it and the storm scrolls at the same speed and then stops immediately after your finger leaves it.
On an iphone when you reach the bottom it sort of 'overshoots' its a bit and stops to show you there is no more. On a storm... you hit the bottom and it stops. But it doesn't give you that visual cue that you are at the bottom.
It goes on... the storm has a comparatively putzy touch support. I hear its because finger movements are just mapped to the old simple trackball/wheel commands (up, down, left, right, click) instead of providing a proper touch api to handle all the additional information.
If there's is something you don't like about the iPhone, you have choices like the Android but if you are patient, Apple might address your issue sometime in the future. It's not a matter of life and death that Apple didn't release the feature you wanted:
2001:
.
Apple: Introducting the iPod: 1000 songs in your pocket.
Naysayers:"No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." Seriously who's going to buy this? It is Mac only, uses Firewire, and costs $400!!
2002:
Apple: iPod 2.0: Touch sensitive scroll wheel. Now compatible with Windows. Up to 20GB
Naysayers: Okay, more space than a Nomad, but no wireless. Firewire only. Still expensive. Easily scratched
2003:
Apple: iPod 3.0: UI Redesign. Now USB compatible. Up to 40GB
Naysayers:Still waiting for wireless. Still expensive. No video or photo capability. Really I need something smaller, maybe flash based. Easily scratched. Still expensive
2004:
Apple: iPod mini: Smaller version of iPod. 4 or 6 GB disk based. iPod 4.0. UI Redesign. Clickwheel. Up to 40GB. iPod 4.1: now with color and photo capability. Up to 60GB
Naysayers:Still no wireless. Still expensive. No video. Maybe a phone/iPod combination would work. Easily scratched. Still expensive
2005:
Apple:iPod Shuffle: Ultra-portable iPod. Up to 1GB. iPod mini v2: New colors. iPod nano: Flash based. Color. Replacing mini. Up to 4GB. iPod 5.0: Now with video. Up to 80GB
Naysayers:No screen on the shuffle. Small video screen on the iPod. And it's not a touch screen. Replace the profitable mini, are they insane? The nano scraches too easily! Still no wireless. When is Apple going to make an iPhone? Still expensive
2006:
Apple:iPod Shuffle: Even smaller. Metallic shell. Up to 2GB. iPod nano: New scratch-resistant metallic shell. More battery life. Up to 8GB.
Naysayers:I can't use the new shuffle as a USB stick! Still no wireless or widescreen or touchscreen. No iPhone. Easily scratched. Still expensive
January 2007:
Apple:iPhone: multi-touch, widescreen iPod + mobile phone + internet browser + wireless
Naysayers:I wanted the phone part to be separate. It's only on AT&T. It's not 3G. I can't buy music wirelessly. It's frickin' expensive.
September 2007:
Apple:iPod Touch: iPhone without the phone. iTunes Music Store built in. iPod nano: New form factor. Video. Up to 8GB. iPod Classic: Metallic shell. Up to 160GB
Naysayers:iPhone is still only AT&T and not 3G. iPod touch is only 8GB and 16GB. And it's frickin' expensive.
February 2008:
Apple:iPod nano: new colors: iPod shuffle: new colors. iPouch Touch: 32GB available
Naysayers:iPhone is still only AT&T and not 3G. iPod Touch and iPhone are still expensive
June 2008:
Apple:iPhone 2.0: 3G. Slimmer, faster, more apps, cheaper. 8GB $199. 16GB $299
Naysayers:iPhone is still only AT&T. No cut and paste. The camera is 1.3MP and not video. Not cheaper: AT&T 3G plan costs me more than 2.5G plan. I blame Apple for this.
March 2009:
Apple:iPhone 3.0 software: Cut and paste. Bluetooth peer-to-peer connectivity. Complete iPhone search. landscape keyboard. MMS messaging. and voice memos.
Naysayers:Where's my total Exchange interoperability? No printing. No email filtering. No video recording.
Fast forward to the future . .
2020:
Apple:iPod femto: Size of a business card, but thinner. Direct neural interface. No charging, uranium battery last 5,000 years. Up to 500TB. iPhone X: Instantaneous, realtime language translation. Up to 20PB
Naysayers:Still no ogg. Should be 1PB. Neural interface is only in HD and not Extreme-HD. Should have used plutonium batteries that last 10,000 years. iPho
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Expect certain posters to pivot from claiming copy-and-paste is a useless unnecessary feature to ragging on another other phone that does not include it out of the box.
is a good phone firewall app that allows you to block calls from phone numbers by using simple globs (e.g. 909 ***-**** would drop all calls from area code 909).
I don't know if any phone has this (I know there is a $20 app for jail broken iPhone 3G), but it should be provided as part of the iPhone OS in the first place.
The user should be in control of their phone and who is allowed to get through to them. As it is now tele marketers can ruin you life :D.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
All hail our "no more overlord references" overlords.
"There are no facts, only interpretations." --Friedrich Nietzsche.
Sony doesn't charge me for firmware upgrades for my PS3. Nintendo doesn't charge me for firmware upgrades for my Wii. BlackBerry and T-Mobile don't charge me for upgrades for my BlackBerry.
And most tellingly, Apple doesn't charge me for firmware upgrades for my Time Capsule, even when they add functionality.
So I don't buy the excuse.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Flash
Javascript
Adblock (the smallest pipe of any of my computers, this should be #1 priority)
Finer control over volume of alerts
Time based silent mode for some alerts
Better icon management
Hierarchical icon paradigm (over 15,000 apps and I can only have 148 of them currently)
The list is huge
Sheldon
Thank you! Thank you all for coming! It is I, Steve Jobs, the Chief Imagination Officer of Apple, also known to many as Your Leader and Overlord of All Things Shiny, Desirable, and Expensive.
Today we're going to make some history together! So...welcome to Macworld. It was just a decade ago that I was up here, announcing that we were going to revolutionize the world--a huge endeavor, I admit. I said we were going to do it over the coming twelve years--we did it in seven years. We couldn't have done this alone; we did it with the help of a lot of folks: Our new colleagues in scientific agencies around the world, our devoted imagineers of more than just hardware and software, but of minds and vision. Thank you very much. Now as you know, our retail stores have for a while been selling half of our Apple iProducts to people who have never owned an Apple iProduct before. For this, I would like to thank our custom--err--loyal members of the Apple Family for spreading the gospel. Without you, we would still be just another average tech company based out of California. Instead, we are now one step closer to world domination through over-priced, beautifully designed, consumer electronics. Now everyone, please gaze upon me and yearn, yearn for the secrets that only I know! The rumor channels are full of speculation and I--your balding, black-turtleneck-endowed Leader--know the iTruth. Bow before me and grovel at my iFeet! (Mwahaha!)
Now please, before I continue, I would like to make sure that everyone present at this glorious ceremony is a true iBeliever. As a reminder, if you are not a true iBeliever you are not a member of our Apple Family, and as a result you will be cast out and sent into the Reality Distortion Field for re-education regarding our iProducts...
This is a day I've been looking forward to ever since I realized that I would never be able to become as rich or as famous as Bill Gates currently is. Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything. And one is very fortunate if they get to witness even a single one of these products in their lifetime. Apple has been very fortunate--I've been able to say myself that I've introduced a few of these into the world. In 1984, the Macintosh revolutionized the computer industry with its graphical interface stolen from Xerox Corporation. In 1998, the iMac built upon the success of our other computers that were still playing catch-up with Microsoft Windows. In 2001, the iPod changed the entire music industry (thus ensuring high sales for one of our planned iProducts, the iHearingAid). In 2007, the iPhone transfigured the mobile phone industry, forcing innovation upon all other lesser mobile phone manufacturers. And today, we are going to introduce an infinite number of products of this elite class.
Because infinity is such a large number, I am going to introduce just three of these iProducts today. The first one is a newly developed iPod. But not just any iPod as you will soon see. The second is a breakthrough communications device featuring not just audio and video, but even more as you will witness in just a minute. And the third device is an amazingly advanced supercomputer. An iPod. A communicator. A supercomputer. ... Are you getting it? These are not infinitely many different devices--this is one all encompassing device--and we are calling it iEverything! Today Apple is going to reinvent the world! ... And here it is. Can you see it? Do you know what it looks like? No! It's inside me...
Now let me talk about a category of things... The most "personal" computers are the ones we carry around with us all the time: our cell phone, our portable music player, our PDA, and for some people a two-way communicator. For many people, these are all separate devices, with distinct interfaces, discrete components, and different screens, keyboards, and batteries all to deal with. The iEverything aims to leapfrog this problem.
We're going to start with a revolutionary user interfa
kernel: lp0 on fire
You know, no phone I've ever owned has had cut-and-paste.
Are you equally upset about all those?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So, what you mean is, you've never owned a smartphone. My corded landline doesn't have cut and paste either, but every smartphone I've had has had cut and paste.
Record video from the camera
Seriously. If a couple amateurs can get it to work at some level despite every restriction they had in their way, there's just no excuse. Even if it sucked, it'd be better than nothing.
They market the phone to replace a number of gadgets people might carry around, and they sort of do it (mostly). That's the most frustrating thing of all. If Apple's iPhone division was running a marathon, it'd be like this: they'd start an hour and a half late, but regardless, they'd relentlessly catch up with the rest of the competitors. Then, they'd blaze ahead of the competition for the rest of the race--but they'd stop 20 feet before the finish line and just sit down right there, completely unexhausted, but protesting the idea of moving another inch.
Get off your asses and finish the job, you jerks!
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Our management have been chomping at the bit to get iphones.
Unfortunately they've also mandated we s/mime encrypt all intra-company email, which doesn't work on the thing as you can't install a certificate.
Does anyone with access to the new SDK know if certs have been added to the thing?
With dock accessibility available now...an AB + 4 way control joystick can be built now!
Gaming potential is unbelievable!
--
I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer.
No, I want a Blackberry Storm that made it through QA.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
A2DP
Oops. Not so missing. My bad. :)
Hey, /., how about easing up on the 2nd-post-wait timer for subscribers, huh?
The really interesting thing in the announcement I thought was a hint that there might possibly be some low level of bacground apps. They were not clear on what they meant but this is a big deal.
People have complained there is no flash. At first I assumed, like most folks, this was because apple was stiffing adobe. Then after I started programming for iphone I got a glimpse of why I think there is no flash.
Basically there can only be one app runnning and resident at a time. When you switch between apps and then come back to say safari, it comes back to where you left it so from your point of view it looks like safari was resident and running while your attention was elsewhere. But this is not the case.
It's a clever illusion. Apps have to manage their own persistence. So to make it seem like that safari or any app has to save and restore it's complete state. And the apple iphone rules require this all has to happen in under 5 seconds or you get a kill -9 applied to your slow ass.
Now imagine safari is also running flash under the hood. It does not have the flash internal sate that it can save and restore so how can safari persist a flash system across sessions? It could try a desperation move and try sweeping out the memory as an image. But that won't work since it won't have permission from the OS to do that. Even if it did have permission, then what if flash is storing things on disk, how is safari supposed to keep all the file handles open across sessions?
You could probably come up with some workaround kludges but it would not be pretty.
And then there's that 5 second problem. If safari has to load and resotre it's state almost instantly, you don't want it having to speculatively reload flash every session start just because at some point in your browsing history you opened a flash web site. You'd have a really annoying end result of delaying the application swap for everyone by a second or two every time.
So you can see it's not as simple as it sounds due to the one-app resident at a time rule.
since the iphone has no Virtual memory, you can't just let it be resident and not running either.
thus you can see allowing background apps is not something to do lightly or get yourself locked into (like for example, windows CE) and have to have a task and memory management the user must control.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
High end Nokia phones have cut-and-paste, bluetooth, and more. Just because you have not owned one, does not mean other people are not used to them and don't expect these features to be standard on all phones.
Every one of the 4 different Palm OS smartphones I've owned had cut/paste. And not just between Palm apps either, I could cut/paste between the phone dialer interface as well.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
With a bluethooth keyboard, I could use my iphone to take notes in class, and minutes at meetings. This feature is long overdue.
I bought an iphone after I learnt that compatible bluetooth keyboards were available for pre-order. Yes it's true, I'm admitting that I've been done.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
* Blender-Proof
mod me funny
Dude are you serious? Nokias have been able to cut and paste for years. My Ericsson W910i can cut and paste any piece of text I want, anywhere. It even does it with a decent UI, I merely open up my options menu, tell it I want to mark some text, click the start and the end of my desired text, and it copies it. then I can paste it wherever. Its a $100 phone with no keyboard! Its not 'smart' but I tell you what, it has HDMI, a web browser, a better camera than the iPhone that can take video, and its a decent mp3 player, and it can cut and paste with extreme ease, it even has a very similar predictive text system to the iPhone.
But its not an iPhone, its just a cheap ass middle of the road free on a basic plan thing that everybody has. So why, why does it have equal to or better features than the iPhone, a damn expensive premium product?
Thank you. Lately the mods have been nailing me for no reason, I don't get it... oh well, serves me right even for being a tiny bit negative towards an apple product on slashdot :)
What counts as high end? I bought my Nokia 'music phone' for EUR 150, and I have copy-paste (and bluetooth, but no wlan...).
In fact, my wife's phone cost EUR 70 in December 2006 and it has copy-paste... She even uses it occasionally. Sometimes to work around the memory limits caused by ~2000 SMS, but nevertheless
It is what it is.
So like, when can I use my iPhone as a mass storage device apple? You know, to put like some files on it and make it infinitely more useful? Sigh.
So, what you mean is, you've never owned a smartphone. My corded landline doesn't have cut and paste either, but every smartphone I've had has had cut and paste.
Lucky you. I have a fairly recent Nokia "business phone" with Symbian S60 as the operating system (Nokia E61i). It does support cut and paste, BUT you can only cut and paste (or copy for that matter) in edit mode. What this means is that you can't copy from a webpage, and to copy from an email you have to select "forward" or "reply". I guess you could call that smart if you stretch things?
Any likelihood of being able to take a video clip with the camera ?
The iPhone has been dominating Apple's software development strategy for quite a while now. After all, Apple did delay the release of Leopard for several months because they had shifted resources to the iPhone, and both Leopard and Snow Leopard are bringing APIs to the desktop from the iPhone OS. When you consider that Snow Leopard is going further than any other Mac OS X release to kill Carbon (esp. the Finder), it becomes clear that Apple really wants a homogeneous developer environment across all their devices.
I currently use fring on my iphone to skype out when I'm on an 802.11 connection. The app is free and just uses standard skype-out billing if you are calling a normal phone number. It supports a variety of voice chat options (skype, msn, generic SIP and google talk...sorry no yahoo yet) integrated into a single interface. My only complaint (working for an IVR company) is that it doesn't currently support DTMF (touch tones) like the normal desktop skype client. Hopefully it will also take advantage of the new push APIs to support an always on mode...that would really make it shine.
Fear trumps hope and ignorance trumps both
The apps still won't run in the background, but yes, that's the intended purpose. Basically, take an IM client as a great example. For most of them out there (Beejive and others excepted, because they're smart), when the app isn't running, you're logged out of the service, and people have to know your phone number to send you messages. With 3.0, apps like IM clients can notify the phone directly when its user has received a new message, then they can tap into the app and get said message. This is how it was initially intended to be, and it'll be nice to finally see some follow-through.
Even MMS is kind of pointless with an email enabled device.
I still think MMS is a relic that needs to die.
However, the iPhone being able to receive MMS serves a useful purpose - when someone sends you one you can instantly reply back with a message saying "Get a real phone loser".
(P.S. for the Haters out there, did I say they had to get an iPhone? I did not).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
it has HDMI,
I have to ask, why? (and really, are you sure?)
"Educate the mind but never at the expense of the soul."~Blessed Basil Moreau
Why is this so hard to understand? The reason for wanting enough space for your entire music collection is so that you can play anything you want on demand. Who cares if 80% of it never gets listened to?
If 80% of it never gets listened to, who cares if its not there?
That one day when I'm in the mood to listen to a particular album, I don't want to be cursing the fact that it's not on my iPod at the moment.
If you went the last 5 years without listening to the song, and then not being able to play it today, right now, this very second sends you off cursing your ipod. You need a sense of perspective more than a bigger ipod.
Why try to predict which subset of your music you'll feel like listening to?
Its not really case of prediction.
For example in addition to a number of playlists I have my ipod set to sync every single track I've listened to more than once in the last 5 years. Plus every single track I've listened to at least once in the last year. Plus every single track I've added in the last 6 months. Plus every single track I've bothered to mark with any number of stars.
And it all fits with plenty of room to spare.
And while it happens that sometimes I'll be in an eclectic mood and want something I don't have it doesn't happen anywhere near often enough for me to curse the device, or wish I could have spent hundreds more for more capacity.
God forbid someone would ask for a feature that would make their usage more convenient.
There is a limit to how much is really worth moaning about. And when they ship with 1TB the OP will moan that he can't have his entire dvd collection with him.
I'm not saying 32GB is 'enough' and that no one has a use for more, but its hardly something to rant about.
Who mods this shit insightful?
Evidently people who agree the 32GB limit is not a particularly woeful shortcoming of the ipod touch.
So does my IBM XT.
spam filtering in email: :P
You haven't answered the question why you aren't doing spam filtering on the server rather than your phone? Set up a hosted email server and set up your spam filtering there. You have to get your email from somewhere, again, filter on the server. Hundred lines of code my ass, it's not a matter of lines of code if ten lines on a server would be less work. What if your phone goes down and you need to access your email from another PC or a web browser? It would be even better to filter there if you use IMAP. If you are still using POP then this discussion should be over
Printing:
I can understand sometimes you might want to print something, but why not email the project plan? Or use that handy dandy peer to peer stuff in 3.0? You also need to be more specific about printing from a deskop because the reasons to print from a desktop are not all great ones. Some bad reasons are:
- I can't read it (I respect this reason but if you can't read your document on an iPhone you shouldn't have an iPhone.
- I like to have a paper copy as backup (you should be backing up electronically and not wasting paper)
- my coworker doesn't have X so I can't send it to him (well then get coworker X because if you are paperless and your buddy isn't and you work for the same company then your company is being stupid.
- Paper just feels better (sure it does, and it's nice and flexible, but if you are printing out 20 emails a day, you aren't getting good work out of your screen are you?)
Come companies require paper, and government still requires paper. However, the reasons for printing are becoming less and less each day. While I do understand the reasons for printing, what you haven't answered is the demand itself, which I asserted in my sentence as being lower than you think. Saying Ford should have sold buggywhips on the side because people still want to use them kind of flies in the face that you have this shiny new mode of transportation that doesn't need them. Sure you are going to be pining for a buggy whip once in a while when you have a buggy and horse and no way to get the horse to move, but does that mean every Ford should be sold with them just in case?
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
you need a visual cue to tell you your hand has gone off the edge of the phone??
To tell me I've I'm at the bottom of the document or list.
If I try and scroll down past the bottom of a document on the iphone, it pushes the document up a bit and stops to show me visually that I'm at the bottom, there is nothing below, when I release it slides back down.
On the storm, it just does nothing.
So if I'm scrolling a long list and arrive at the bottom after moving my finger 3/4s of the way down the screen, the iphone pushes up a bit and shows me I'm at the bottom. The storm just stops scrolling.
So on the iphone I know I'm at the bottom of the list. With the storm I'm not sure if maybe my finger just lost good contact 3/4 of the way through, and have to try another swipe to see if it really won't go down any more.
Yes I know about the scroll bar, but that's not nearly as good feedback, especially in long documents or lists.
...and while you present an interesting technical argument for lack of flash on the iPhone, it's much much simpler.
Flash games and applications bypass the app store.
If you bypass the app store, AT&T and Apple don't get to extract [more] money out of you or out of the end user. Apple and AT&T are more interested in money than in truly unifying the mobile and fixed web browsing experiences. End of story.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
Apple invented standardized copy and paste in the OS with the Macintosh. It invented mobile copy and paste conventions with Newton.
So ask yourself, is Apple just too stupid to please an arrogant but anonymous coward, or are you perhaps uninformed on what might be involved in developing secure copy and paste on a new platform with a unique security model?
Do you understand that other phones with copy/paste features do not sandbox their apps? That their kernels will pretty much run any code from any source? That rogue apps can do anything?
The more you learn, the less you'll view the world in simple black and white as a bunch of things to be outraged about.